Monika Zalnieriute

Country:	Australia
Email:	monika.zalnieriute [at] eui.eu
LinkedIn:	Monika Zalnieriute
Featured in the ICANN 53 - Buenos Aires playing card deck

Dr. Monika Zalnieriute is a human rights scholar and advocate, working in the area of Internet Governance, data privacy, surveillance, freedom of expression and the rights of marginalized and vulnerable groups online. Monika believes that research only matters if it has a strong and tangible impact well beyond academia; and thus is actively engaged both within academic, as well as civil society and policy-making circles. She holds a PhD in Law from European University Institute in Florence; and has recently been awarded a full Post-Doctoral Fellowship to conduct her own two-year research project at Melbourne Law School at Melbourne University in Australia, that she has joined in February 2016.

Monika is also a founding Director of a researched-based non-governmental advocacy organization ‘ZEPHIRO: Progressive Platform for Human Rights’ in Vilnius, Lithuania; a visiting Fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary; and an affiliated Fellow at the Centre for Internet & Human Rights in Berlin, Germany. Monika also provides legal research expertise on data privacy and free speech issues to Council of Europe and non-governmental human rights organizations.

Monika is currently serving on the Executive Committee of the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG), which is part of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), within Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and works towards the strengthening of the human rights protection within ICANN policies and procedures in particular. Council of Europe as well as Article 19 released her expertise reports on ICANN & human rights, that have attracted a lot of attention among various stakeholders within Internet Governance circles.

Monika often delivers talks at various international Information Society gatherings and international workings groups, such as the United Nation Internet Governance Forum, EuroDIG, International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications, and the Council of Europe Committee on Data Protection, among others. She has published in European Journal of International Law, International Journal of Law and Information Technology, Computer Law & Security Review and International Data Privacy Law. Monika was previously a legal researcher at Privacy International and a research assistant at the European University Institute. She also holds an LLM in International and Comparative Law from the European University Institute and an LLM in European Law from the University of Leiden; and has previously conducted research in the UK, France, Netherlands, Lithuania and Italy. She now focuses on Asia-Pacific in particular.

ICANN 52 in Singapore was Zalnieriute's first ICANN conference.

Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group. Represents the full range of non-commercial entities of the Internet (ICANN Bylaws). Not to be confused with the At-Large Advisory Committee.

Generic Names Supporting Organization. Develops and recommends to the Board substantive policies relating to generic top-level domains and other responsibilities set forth in the Bylaws (ICANN Bylaws).